How To Live Or A Life Of Montaigne Part 9

A GAY AND SOCIABLE WISDOM.

"THERE ARE PRIVATE, retiring, and inward natures," writes Montaigne. His is not one of them.

My essential pattern is suited to communication and revelation. I am all in the open and in full view, born for company and friendship.

He loves to mingle. Conversation is something he enjoys more than any other pleasure. He depends on it so much that he would rather lose his sight than his hearing or speech, for talk is better than books. There is no need for it to be of a serious nature: what he likes best is "the sharp, abrupt repartee which good spirits and familiarity introduce among friends, bantering and joking wittily and keenly with one another." Any conversation is good, so long as it is kind-spirited and friendly. Social grace of this kind should be encouraged in children from an early age, to bring them out of their private worlds. "Wonderful brilliance may be gained for human judgment by getting to know men. We are all huddled and concentrated in ourselves, and our vision is reduced to the length of our nose."

Montaigne loved open debate. "No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers with my own." He liked being contradicted, as it opened up more interesting conversations and helped him to think-something he preferred to do through interaction rather than staring into the fire like Descartes. His friend Florimond de Raemond described his conversation as "the sweetest and most enriched with graces." Yet when Montaigne was not feeling sweet, or when he was carried away by the topic of a discussion, he could be vociferous. His pa.s.sion led him to say things that were indiscreet, and he encouraged others to do the same. Freedom of expression was the law of his house. At the Montaigne estate, he said, there was never any "waiting on people and escorting them here and away, and other such troublesome prescriptions of our code of manners (oh, what a servile and bothersome practice!)." Guests behaved as they pleased, and those who craved solitude could also go and do their own thing for as long as they liked, without causing offense.

As well as banishing formal etiquette, Montaigne discouraged tedious small talk. Self-conscious solo performances bored him too. Some of his friends could keep a group rapt for hours with anecdotes, but Montaigne preferred a natural give and take. At official dinners away from home, where the talk was merely conventional, his attention would wander; if someone suddenly addressed him, he would often make inappropriate replies, "unworthy of a child." He regretted this, for easy conversation in trivial situations was valuable: it opened the path to deeper relationships, and to the more pleasant evenings where one could joke and laugh at ease.

For Montaigne, "relaxation and affability" were not merely useful talents; they were essential to living well. He tried to cultivate what he called a "gay and sociable wisdom"-a phrase that calls to mind a famous definition of philosophy, by Nietzsche, as the "gay" or "joyful" science. Nietzsche, like the libertins libertins, agreed with Montaigne that a humane, sociable understanding was what mattered, although Nietzsche himself found it difficult. His relationships were often traumatic. Yet, in a touching pa.s.sage of his early book Human All Too Human Human All Too Human, he wrote: Among the small but endlessly abundant and therefore very effective things that science ought to heed more than the great, rare things, is goodwill [Wohlwollen]. I mean those expressions of a friendly disposition in interactions, that smile of the eye, those handclasps, the ease which usually envelops nearly all human actions. Every teacher, every official brings this ingredient to what he considers his duty. It is the continual manifestation of our humanity, its rays of light, so to speak, in which everything grows...Good nature, friendliness, and courtesy of heart...have made much greater contributions to culture than those much more famous expressions of this drive, called pity, charity, and self-sacrifice.

To Montaigne, most of the time, friendly goodwill came easily. This was fortunate, for he had much need of it both at home and in his professional life. He had to get on well with colleagues in Bordeaux; later, his work required him to charm diplomats, kings, and fearsome warlords further afield. He often had to establish a rapport with opponents blinded by religious fanaticism. Around the estate, too, it was important to socialize with the neighbors-not always easy. They appear from time to time in the Essays Essays, often with colorful stories attached: the miserly marquis de Trans, whose family the Foix were very powerful in the region; a Jean de Lusignan, who tired himself by organizing too many parties for his grown-up children; Francois de La Rochefoucauld, who believed that blowing one's nose into a handkerchief was a disgusting practice and that it was nicer to use just fingers. Some n.o.blewomen of the area became dedicatees of individual chapters: Diane de Foix, comtesse de Gurson; Marguerite de Gramond; and Mme d'Estissac, whose son later accompanied Montaigne to Italy. Above all, Montaigne befriended the woman who became the mistress of Henri de Navarre (later to be Henri IV): Diane d'Andouins, comtesse de Guiche et de Gramont, usually known as "Corisande" after a character in one of her favorite chivalric novels.

To keep up with such friends, Montaigne had to take part in many fashionable entertainments which he privately disliked. When he had guests, he might start a deer in his forests for them, much as he recoiled from hunting. He had more success in avoiding jousting, which he thought lethal and futile. He also tried to wriggle out of the indoor amus.e.m.e.nts of the period, including poetry games, cards, and rebus-like puzzles-perhaps because, by his own admission, he was not good at them.

His home was often visited by itinerant performers: acrobats, dancers, trainers of performing dogs, and human "monsters," all desperately trying to make a living by touring the country. Montaigne tolerated them, but remained unimpressed by clever-clogs displays such as that of a man who tossed grains of millet through the eye of a needle from a distance. He was more interested in novelties that meant something, such as the group of Tupinamba whom he met in Rouen. And he would travel considerable distances to investigate reports of anomalous births, like that of a child who was born with a headless portion of another child attached to his torso. He visited a hermaphroditic shepherd in Medoc, and met a man without arms who could use his feet to load and fire a pistol, thread a needle, sew, write, comb his hair, and play cards. Like the millet-t.o.s.s.e.r, he survived by exhibiting himself, but Montaigne found him much more interesting. People spoke of "monsters," he wrote, but such individuals were not contrary to nature, only to habit. Where real oddity was concerned, there was no doubt where Montaigne thought the prize should go: I have seen no more evident monstrosity and miracle in the world than myself. We become habituated to anything strange by use and time; but the more I frequent myself and know myself, the more my deformity astonishes me, and the less I understand myself.

Thus the estate was a busy crossroads, traversed by streams of people in all directions. The atmosphere was more like that of a village than of a private home. Even when Montaigne went off to his tower to write, he rarely worked alone or in silence. People talked and worked around him; outside his window horses would have been led back and forth from the stables, while hens clucked and dogs barked. In the wine-making season, the air would be filled with the sound of clanking presses. Even at the height of the wars, Montaigne kept his property more open to the world than others did-a rare decision in such dangerous times.

In some ways, Montaigne's world became a private universe unto itself, with its own values and an atmosphere of freedom. Yet he never made it a fortress. He insisted on welcoming anyone who arrived at the gate, though he knew the risks and admitted that sometimes it meant going to bed not knowing whether he would be murdered in his sleep by some itinerant soldier or vagrant. But the principle was too important. When Montaigne wrote, "I am all in the open and in full view," he was not alluding only to social chitchat. He meant that he wanted to remain in free, honest communication with other human beings-even those who seemed bent on killing him.

OPENNESS, MERCY, AND CRUELTY.

According to Giovanni Botero, an Italian political writer living in France in the 1580s, the French countryside of that decade was so rife with thieves and murderers that every house was obliged to keep "watchmen of the vineyards and orchards; gates, locks, bolts, and mastiffs." Apparently Botero had not visited the Montaigne estate. There the only defender was a person whom Montaigne described as "a porter of ancient custom and ceremony, who serves not so much to defend my door as to offer it with more decorum and grace."

Montaigne lived this way because he was determined to resist intimidation, and did not want to become his own jailer. But he also believed that, paradoxically, his openness made him safer. Heavily guarded houses in the area suffered far more attacks than his did. He quoted Seneca for the explanation: "Locked places invite the thief. The burglar pa.s.ses by what is open." Locks made a place look valuable, and there could be no sense of glory in robbing a household where one was welcomed by an elderly doorkeeper. Also, the usual rules of fortification hardly apply in a civil war: "Your valet may be of the party that you fear." You cannot barricade the gates against a threat that is already inside; far better to win the enemy over by behaving with generosity and honor.

Events seemed to prove Montaigne right. Once, he invited a troop of soldiers in, only to realize that they were plotting to take advantage of his hospitality by seizing the place. They abandoned the plan, however, and the leader told Montaigne why: he had been "disarmed" by the sight of his host's "face and frankness."

In the outer world, too, Montaigne's openness protected him from violence. Once, traveling through a forest in a dangerous rural area, he was attacked by fifteen to twenty masked men, followed by a wave of mounted archers-a huge a.s.sault, apparently planned in advance. They took him to a thick part of the forest, rifled through his possessions, seized his traveling cases and money box, and discussed how to divide his horses and other equipment among themselves. Worse, they then got the idea of holding him as a hostage for further gain, but could not decide how much ransom to ask. Montaigne overheard them debating the matter and realized they were likely to set the sum excessively high, which would mean his death if no one could afford to pay. He could stand it no more, and called out to interrupt them. They already had everything they were going to get, he declared. However high they set the ransom, it made no difference: they would see none of it. It was a risky way to speak, but after this the bandits underwent a dramatic change. They huddled for a moment in fresh discussion, then the leader walked over to Montaigne with an air almost of friendliness. He removed his mask-a significant gesture, since the two men could now confront each other face to face, like human beings-and said that they had decided to let him go. They even gave back some of his possessions, including the money box. The leader explained it by saying that, as Montaigne wrote later, "I owed my deliverance to my face and the freedom and firmness of my speech." He was saved by his natural, honest appearance, combined with his bravery in facing up to aggression.

This was the kind of confrontation that could happen at any time, to any person, and Montaigne often wondered about the best way of dealing with it. Is it wiser to face up squarely to your enemy and challenge him, or should you curry favor by showing submission? Should you throw yourself on the aggressor's mercy and hope that his sense of humanity will make him spare you? Or is that foolhardy?

The problem is that each response brings its own dangers. Defiance might impress the other, but it might also infuriate him. Submission might inspire pity, but it is just as likely to draw your enemy's contempt, so that he wipes you out with no more thought than he would give to stamping on an insect. As for appealing to his sense of humanity, how can you be sure that he has one?

These questions were no easier to decide in the violent sixteenth century than on an ancient Mediterranean battlefield, or in an alleyway in a modern city, facing up to a mugger. They are perennial, and Montaigne did not see any one good answer. Yet he never tired of exploring the question. Again and again in the Essays Essays, he sets up scenes featuring two individuals in confrontation, one defeated and obliged either to beg for his life or show defiance, the other required either to show mercy or deny it.

In one such incident, described in the first essay in the book, the fifteenth-century Albanian military hero Skanderbeg was on the point of killing one of his own soldiers in a rage. The man appealed for pity, but Skanderbeg remained unmoved. In desperation, the soldier grabbed his sword and fought back-which so impressed Skanderbeg that his anger evaporated and he let the man go. Another story tells of Edward, Prince of Wales, who strode through a defeated French town ordering ma.s.s killings of citizens to left and right. He stopped only when he came to three men, cornered but still fighting. Admiring them, he spared their lives, and added as an afterthought that everyone else in the town might be spared as well.

These stories imply that defiance is a better policy. But the same essay looks at incidents that turned out differently. When Alexander the Great attacked the city of Gaza, he found the enemy leader Betis "alone, abandoned by his men, his armor cut to pieces, all covered with blood and wounds, still fighting on." Like Edward, Alexander admired this, but only for a moment. As Betis continued to defy him, staring him insolently in the face, Alexander lost patience. He had Betis pierced through the heels and dragged behind a cart until he was dead. The defeated leader had gone too far, and with the wrong opponent.

Other stories show, just as clearly, the dangers of submission. Montaigne vividly remembered the case of Tristan de Moneins, the lieutenant-general who was lynched in a Bordeaux street after he presented himself too humbly to the salt-tax rioters in 1548. Once one has shown weakness and triggered a sort of hunting instinct in the other, all is lost. And there is rarely any hope if one really is facing a hunter. Montaigne was haunted by the image of a stag at bay after hours of pursuit, exhausted and trapped, having no option but to give himself up to the hunters-"asking for our mercy by his tears." Such mercy will never be granted.

However many confrontations Montaigne restaged in his mind's eye, they all seemed to suggest different interpretations and different answers. This is why they fascinated him. In each case the defeated party must make a decision, but so must the victor, for things can go badly wrong for him if he misjudges the situation. If he spares someone who interprets his generosity as weakness, he may be killed in turn. If he is too harsh, he will attract rebellion and revenge.

Christianity seems to offer a simple answer: the victor should always show mercy, and the victim should always turn the other cheek. But the real world cannot be relied upon to work that way-and neither could most Christians in this era of violent religious war. Montaigne paid little attention to theology: he was immersed in his cla.s.sical reading and, as usual, seemed to forget the Christian angle. For him, in any case, the true difficulties were psychological rather than moral. Or if they were moral, it was in the broader sense of that term used in cla.s.sical philosophy, where it did not mean following precepts but knowing how to make just and intelligent decisions in real life.

Montaigne's view, on balance, was that both victim and victor should take the path that entailed placing maximum trust in the other-that is, like good Christians, the defeated party should seek mercy and the victor should grant it. But both must do this boldly, with an "open countenance," free of cringing and submissiveness. A "pure and clean confidence" should characterize the situation on both sides. Montaigne would have found his ideal encounter in the scene that took place in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989, when tanks moved in to suppress a demonstration. One man, incongruously carrying an ordinary shopping bag, stood calm and still in front of them; in response, the first tank's driver stopped. Had the man been cowering or trying to escape, or, conversely, had he been yelling and waving his fists, it would have been easier for the driver to kill him. Instead, the man's "pure and clean confidence" brought out a similar resolution in his opponent.

This would not work for a stag, where fellow-feeling is blocked by the hunting relationship; perhaps it would not work between an accused witch and a torturer, where fanaticism and obedience to roles would get in the way. War disrupts normal psychology too, just as mob hysteria does. Although the Tiananmen Square scene was violent, it occurred in what was technically peacetime, whereas battle creates an altered state of mind. In the cla.s.sical world, and to some extent in Montaigne's time, it was considered only right that a soldier in battle should be incapable of restraint. He should be in a furor: furor: a fearless, ecstatic frenzy in which no moderation or mercy could or should be expected. a fearless, ecstatic frenzy in which no moderation or mercy could or should be expected.

Montaigne found furor furor appalling, as he did most extreme states. He disliked the way Julius Caesar reportedly whipped up his soldiers to savagery before a battle with speeches like this: appalling, as he did most extreme states. He disliked the way Julius Caesar reportedly whipped up his soldiers to savagery before a battle with speeches like this: When weapons flash, no pious sentiments, Though you confront your fathers, you must feel; No, slash their venerable faces with the steel.

Of all famous warriors, Montaigne most admired the Theban general Epaminondas, who was known for his ability to keep furor furor in check: once, in mid-battle and "terrible with blood and iron," Epaminondas found himself face to face with an acquaintance in whose house he had stayed. He turned aside and did not kill him. That might seem unremarkable, but in theory a soldier should no more be capable of such conscious restraint than would a shark in a feeding frenzy. Epaminondas proved himself "in command of war itself," as Montaigne wrote; he made the battle "endure the curb of benignity" at the very height of the ecstasy. in check: once, in mid-battle and "terrible with blood and iron," Epaminondas found himself face to face with an acquaintance in whose house he had stayed. He turned aside and did not kill him. That might seem unremarkable, but in theory a soldier should no more be capable of such conscious restraint than would a shark in a feeding frenzy. Epaminondas proved himself "in command of war itself," as Montaigne wrote; he made the battle "endure the curb of benignity" at the very height of the ecstasy.

Montaigne suspected that the furor furor tradition was often used merely as an excuse. "Let us take away from wicked, b.l.o.o.d.y, and treacherous natures this pretext of reason." Brutality was bad enough in itself; brutality on the excuse of an elevated mental state was worse. Above all, he deplored the holy zeal of religious fanatics, who believed that G.o.d demanded such extreme, unreasoning violence as proof of devotion. tradition was often used merely as an excuse. "Let us take away from wicked, b.l.o.o.d.y, and treacherous natures this pretext of reason." Brutality was bad enough in itself; brutality on the excuse of an elevated mental state was worse. Above all, he deplored the holy zeal of religious fanatics, who believed that G.o.d demanded such extreme, unreasoning violence as proof of devotion.

Cruelty nauseated Montaigne: he could not help himself. He hated it cruelly cruelly, as he wrote, making a point of the paradox. His revulsion was instinctive, as much a part of him as the openness written all over his face. This was why he could not stand hunting. Even seeing a chicken having its neck wrung, or a hare caught by dogs, horrified him. The same perspective-leaping tendency that enabled him to borrow his cat's point of view made it impossible for him to see a hare being ripped apart without feeling it in his own guts.

If he could not watch a hare in pain, still less could he stomach the human tortures and judicial killings that were common in his day. "Even the executions of the law, however reasonable they may be, I cannot witness with a steady gaze." In his own career, he was expected to order such punishments, but he refused to do so. "I am so squeamish about hurting that for the service of reason itself I cannot do it. And when occasions have summoned me to sentencing criminals, I have tended to fall short of justice."

He was not the only writer of his time to oppose either hunting or torture. What is unusual in Montaigne is his reason for it: his visceral rapport with others. When speaking to the Brazilian Indians in Rouen, he was struck by how they spoke of men as halves of one another, wondering at the sight of rich Frenchmen gorging themselves while their "other halves" starved on their doorstep. For Montaigne, all humans share an element of their being, and so do all other living things. "It is one and the same nature that rolls its course." Even if animals were less similar to us than they are, we would still owe them a duty of fellow-feeling, simply because they are alive.

There is a certain respect, and a general duty of humanity, that attaches us not only to animals, who have life and feeling, but even to trees and plants. We owe justice to men, and mercy and kindness to other creatures that may be capable of receiving it. There is some relationship between them and us, and some mutual obligation.

This obligation applies in trivial encounters as well as life-or-death ones. We owe other beings the countless small acts of kindness and empathy that Nietzsche would describe as "goodwill." After the pa.s.sage just quoted, Montaigne added this remark about his dog: I am not afraid to admit that my nature is so tender, so childish, that I cannot well refuse my dog the play he offers me or asks of me outside the proper time.

He indulges his dog because he can imaginatively share the animal's point of view: he can feel feel how desperate the dog is to banish boredom and get his human friend's attention. Pascal mocked Montaigne for this, saying that Montaigne rides his horse as one who does not believe it to be his right to do so, and who wonders whether "the animal, on the contrary, ought really to be making use of him." This is exactly right-and, as much as it annoyed Pascal, it would have pleased Nietzsche, whose final mental breakdown is (unreliably) reported to have begun with his flinging his arms around a horse's neck on a Turin street and bursting into tears. how desperate the dog is to banish boredom and get his human friend's attention. Pascal mocked Montaigne for this, saying that Montaigne rides his horse as one who does not believe it to be his right to do so, and who wonders whether "the animal, on the contrary, ought really to be making use of him." This is exactly right-and, as much as it annoyed Pascal, it would have pleased Nietzsche, whose final mental breakdown is (unreliably) reported to have begun with his flinging his arms around a horse's neck on a Turin street and bursting into tears.

Among less emotionally wrought readers, one much affected by Montaigne's remarks on cruelty was Virginia Woolf's husband, Leonard Woolf. In his memoirs, he held up Montaigne's "On Cruelty" as a much more significant essay than people had realized. Montaigne, he wrote, was "the first person in the world to express this intense, personal horror of cruelty. He was, too, the first completely modern man." The two were linked: Montaigne's modernity resided precisely in his "intense awareness of and pa.s.sionate interest in the individuality of himself and of all other human beings"-and nonhuman beings, too.

Even a pig or a mouse has, as Woolf put it, a feeling of being an "I" to itself. This was the very claim that Descartes had denied so strenuously, but Woolf arrived at it through personal experience rather than Cartesian reasoning. He recalled being asked, as a young boy, to drown some unwanted day-old puppies-an astonishing task to give to a child, one might think. He did what he was told, but was more upset by it than he had expected. Years later, he wrote: Looked at casually, day-old puppies are little, blind, squirming, undifferentiated objects or things. I put one of them in the bucket of water, and instantly an extraordinary, a terrible thing happened. This blind, amorphous thing began to fight desperately for its life, struggling, beating the water with its paws. I suddenly saw that it was an individual, that like me it was an "I," that in its bucket of water it was experiencing what I would experience and fighting death, as I would fight death if I were drowning in the mult.i.tudinous seas. It was I felt and feel a horrible, an uncivilized thing to drown that "I" in a bucket of water.

What brought this incident back to Woolf, as an adult, was reading Montaigne. He went on to apply the insight to politics, reflecting especially on his memory of the 1930s, when the world seemed about to sink into a barbarism that made no room for this small individual self. On a global scale, no single creature can be of much importance, he wrote, yet in another way these I's are the only only things of importance. And only a politics that recognizes them can offer hope for the future. things of importance. And only a politics that recognizes them can offer hope for the future.

Writing about consciousness, the psychologist William James had a similar instinct. We understand nothing of a dog's experience: of "the rapture of bones under hedges, or smells of trees and lamp-posts." They understand nothing of ours, when for example they watch us stare interminably at the pages of a book. Yet both states of consciousness share a certain quality: the "zest" or "tingle" which comes when one is completely absorbed in what one is doing. This tingle should enable us to recognize each other's similarity even when the objects of our interest are different. Recognition, in turn, should lead to kindness. Forgetting this similarity is the worst political error, as well as the worst personal and moral one.

In the view of William James, as of Leonard Woolf and Montaigne, we do not live immured in our separate perspectives, like Descartes in his room. We live porously and sociably. We can glide out of our own minds, if only for a few moments, in order to occupy another being's point of view. This ability is the real meaning of "Be convivial," this chapter's answer to the question of how to live, and the best hope for civilization.

10. Q. How to live? A. Wake from the sleep of habit

IT ALL DEPENDS ON YOUR POINT OF VIEW.

THE ART OF seeing things from the perspective of another person or animal may come instinctively to some, but it can also be cultivated. Novelists do it all the time. While Leonard Woolf was thinking through his political philosophy, his wife Virginia was writing in her diary: seeing things from the perspective of another person or animal may come instinctively to some, but it can also be cultivated. Novelists do it all the time. While Leonard Woolf was thinking through his political philosophy, his wife Virginia was writing in her diary: I remember lying on the side of a hollow, waiting for L[eonard] to come & mushroom, & seeing a red hare loping up the side & thinking suddenly "This is Earth life." I seemed to see how earthy it all was, & I myself an evolved kind of hare; as if a moon-visitor saw me.

This eerie, almost hallucinatory moment gave Woolf a sense of how both she and the hare would look to someone who did not view them through eyes dulled by habit. It enabled her to de-familiarize the familiar-a mental trick, rather like those used by the h.e.l.lenistic philosophers when they imagined looking down on human life from the stars. Like many such tricks, it works by helping one pay proper attention. Habit makes everything look bland; it is sleep-inducing. Jumping to a different perspective is a way of waking oneself up again. Montaigne loved this trick, and used it constantly in his writing.

His favorite device was simply to run through lists of wildly divergent customs from all over the world, marveling at their randomness and strangeness. His two essays "Of Custom" and "Of Ancient Customs" describe countries where women p.i.s.s standing and men squatting, where children are nursed for up to twelve years, where it is considered fatal to nurse a baby on its first day, where hair grows on the right side of the body but is shaved completely off the left side, where one is supposed to kill one's father at a certain age, where people wipe their rears with a sponge on a stick, and where hair is worn long in front and short behind instead of the other way around. Similar lists in the "Apology" run from Peruvians who elongate their ears to Orientals who blacken their teeth because they consider white ones inelegant.

Each culture, in doing these things, takes itself as the standard. If you live in a country where teeth are blackened, it seems obvious that ebony ivories are the only beautiful ones. Reciting diversities helps us to break free of this, if only for brief moments of enlightenment. "This great world," writes Montaigne, "is the mirror in which we must look at ourselves to recognize ourselves from the proper angle." After running through such a list, we look back upon our own existence differently. Our eyes are opened to the truth that our customs are no less weird than anyone else's.

Some of Montaigne's initial interest in such leaps of perspective went back to his observation of the Tupinamba visitors' amazement in Rouen. Watching them watching the French was an awakening, like Virginia Woolf's on the hillside. The encounter stimulated in Montaigne what became a lifelong interest in the New World-an entire hemisphere unknown to Europeans until a few decades before his own birth, and still so surprising that it hardly seemed real.

By the time Montaigne was born, most Europeans had come around to the acceptance that America really did exist and was not a fantasy. Some people had taken up eating hot peppers and chocolate, and a few smoked tobacco. The cultivation of potatoes was under way, although their vaguely testicular shape still made people think they were good only as an aphrodisiac. Returning travelers pa.s.sed on tales of cannibalism and human sacrifice, or of fabulous fortunes in gold and silver. As life in Europe became more difficult, many considered emigrating, and colonies sprouted like mold spores along the eastern coasts. Most were Spanish, but the French also tried their luck. In Montaigne's youth, France looked well placed to prosper in the new colonial adventure. It had a strong fleet, and well-equipped international ports from which to sail-Bordeaux foremost among them.

Several French expeditions were launched in the middle of the century, but they ran into difficulties one by one. French colonists had a particular tendency to undo their enterprises through religious conflict, which they imported with them. The first French settlement in Brazil, founded by Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon near the present site of Rio de Janeiro in the 1550s, was so weakened by its CatholicProtestant divisions that it succ.u.mbed to invasion by the Portuguese. In the 1560s, a mainly Protestant French colony in Florida fell victim to the Spanish. By this time, full civil war had broken out in the French homeland, and the money and organization for major voyages were hard to find. France missed its place in the first great bonanza overseas, the one that made the fortunes of England and Spain. By the time it recovered and tried again later, it was too late to recover the advantage in full.

Like many of his generation, Montaigne had a fascination with all things American combined with cynicism about colonial conquest. He treasured what he remembered of his conversation with the Tupinamba-who had traveled to France in one of Villegaignon's returning ships-and collected South American memorabilia for his cabinet of curiosities in the tower: "specimens of their beds, of their ropes, of their wooden swords, and the bracelets with which they cover their wrists in combats, and of the big canes, open at one end, by whose sound they keep time in their dances." Much of this probably came from a household servant who had lived for a time in the Villegaignon colony. The same man introduced Montaigne to sailors and merchants who could further feed his curiosity. He was himself "a simple, crude fellow," but Montaigne believed this made him an excellent witness, for he was not tempted to embroider or overinterpret what he reported.

Besides conversation, Montaigne also read everything he could get hold of on the subject. His library included French translations of Lopez de Gomara's Historia de las Indias Historia de las Indias and Bartolome de Las Casas's and Bartolome de Las Casas's Brevisima relacion de la destruccion de las Indias Brevisima relacion de la destruccion de las Indias, as well as more recent French originals, notably two great rival accounts of the Villegaignon colony by the Protestant Jean de Lery and the Catholic Andre Thevet. Of the two, he much preferred Lery's Histoire d'un voyage fait en la terre du Bresil Histoire d'un voyage fait en la terre du Bresil (1578), which observed Tupinamba society with sympathy and precision. As befitted a Protestant puritan, Lery admired the Tupinamba preference for going naked rather than adorning themselves with ruffs and furbelows as the French did. He observed that very few of their elderly people had white hair, and suspected it was because they did not wear themselves out with "mistrust, avarice, litigation, and squabbles." And he thought highly of their courage in war. The Tupinamba fought b.l.o.o.d.y battles with magnificent swords, but only for honor, never for conquest or greed. Such encounters usually ended with a feast at which the main course was prisoners of war. Lery himself attended one such event; that night he woke in his hammock to see a man looming over him brandishing a roasted human foot in what seemed to be a threatening manner. He leaped up in fright, to the merriment of the crowd. Later, it was explained to him that the man was only being a generous host and offering him a taste. Lery's faith in his friends was restored. He felt safer among them, he said, than he did at home "among disloyal and degenerate Frenchmen." Indeed, he was destined to witness equally gruesome scenes in the French civil wars, when he became stranded in the hilltop town of Sancerre during a winter siege at the end of 1572 and saw townspeople eating human flesh to survive. (1578), which observed Tupinamba society with sympathy and precision. As befitted a Protestant puritan, Lery admired the Tupinamba preference for going naked rather than adorning themselves with ruffs and furbelows as the French did. He observed that very few of their elderly people had white hair, and suspected it was because they did not wear themselves out with "mistrust, avarice, litigation, and squabbles." And he thought highly of their courage in war. The Tupinamba fought b.l.o.o.d.y battles with magnificent swords, but only for honor, never for conquest or greed. Such encounters usually ended with a feast at which the main course was prisoners of war. Lery himself attended one such event; that night he woke in his hammock to see a man looming over him brandishing a roasted human foot in what seemed to be a threatening manner. He leaped up in fright, to the merriment of the crowd. Later, it was explained to him that the man was only being a generous host and offering him a taste. Lery's faith in his friends was restored. He felt safer among them, he said, than he did at home "among disloyal and degenerate Frenchmen." Indeed, he was destined to witness equally gruesome scenes in the French civil wars, when he became stranded in the hilltop town of Sancerre during a winter siege at the end of 1572 and saw townspeople eating human flesh to survive.

Montaigne read Lery avidly, and, in writing up his own Tupinamba encounter in "Of Cannibals," followed Lery's practice of drawing out the contrast with France and the implications for European a.s.sumptions of superiority. A later chapter, "Of Coaches," also noted how the gilded gardens and palaces of the Incas and Aztecs put European equivalents to shame. But the simple Tupinamba appealed to Montaigne far more. He described them with a list of desirable negatives: [image]

(ill.u.s.tration credit i10.1)

This is a nation...in which there is no sort of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no science of numbers, no name for a magistrate or for political superiority, no custom of servitude, no riches or poverty, no contracts, no successions, no part.i.tions, no occupations but leisure ones, no care for any but common kinship, no clothes, no agriculture, no metal, no use of wine or wheat. The very words that signify lying, treachery, dissimulation, avarice, envy, belittling, pardon-unheard of.

Such "negative enumeration" was a well-established rhetorical device in cla.s.sical literature, long predating the New World encounter. It even turns up in four-thousand-year-old Sumerian cuneiform texts: Once upon a time, there was no snake, there was no scorpion, There was no hyena, there was no lion, There was no wild dog, no wolf, There was no fear, no terror, Man had no rival.

It was only natural that it should recur in Renaissance writing about the New World. The tradition would continue: in the nineteenth century Herman Melville described the happy valley of Typee in the Marquesas as a place where there were "no foreclosures of mortgages, no protested notes, no bills payable, no debts of honor...no poor relations...no dest.i.tute widows...no beggars; no debtors' prisons; no proud and hard-hearted nabobs in Typee; or to sum up all in one word-no money!" The idea was that people were happier when they lived uncluttered lives close to nature, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Stoics had made much of this "Golden Age" fantasy: Seneca fantasized about a world in which property was not h.o.a.rded, weapons were not used for violence, and no sewage pipes polluted the streams. Without houses, people even slept better, for there were no creaking timbers to wake them with a start in the middle of the night.

Montaigne understood the appeal of the fantasy, and shared it. Like wild fruit, he wrote, wild people retain their full natural flavor. This was why they were capable of such bravery, for their behavior in war was untainted by greed. Even the Tupinamba cannibal rituals, far from being degrading, showed primitive people at their best. The victims displayed astonishing courage as they awaited their fate; they even defied their captors with taunts of their own. Montaigne was impressed by a song in which a doomed prisoner challenges his enemies to go ahead and eat their fill. As you do, sings the prisoner, remember that you are eating your own fathers and grandfathers. I have eaten them in the past, so it will be your your flesh you will savor! This is another of those archetypal confrontation scenes: the defeated man is doomed, yet he shows Stoic firmness in the face of his enemy. This, it is implied, is what humans would always be capable of if they only followed their true nature. flesh you will savor! This is another of those archetypal confrontation scenes: the defeated man is doomed, yet he shows Stoic firmness in the face of his enemy. This, it is implied, is what humans would always be capable of if they only followed their true nature.

The prisoner's song is one of two "cannibal songs" to appear in Montaigne's Essays Essays. The other, also from the Tupinamba, is a love lyric which he may have heard performed in Rouen in 1562, for he praises the sound of it: he describes Tupinamba as "a soft language, with an agreeable sound, somewhat like Greek in its endings." In his prose translation, the song goes: [image]

(ill.u.s.tration credit i10.2)